UC Riverside has discussed eliminating competitive sports as it grapples with how to balance the budget amid a steep funding decline driven by the coronavirus pandemic.

And former players and athletic officials are pushing back strongly against the idea.

“To me, this would be an absolutely catastrophic decision,” said Amy Harrison, a former multi-sport athlete and major donor for whom the university’s softball stadium is named. “It doesn’t get worse than this.”

UCR’s budget advisory committee recently listed elimination of athletics, coupled with building a more robust intramural sports program, among four ideas for permanent cuts.

The panel also recommended officials consider asking each college and administrative department to come up with plans to trim expenses 10% to 15%, and to consider eliminating the School of Public Policy and support for a campaign to boost private financial investment in the campus, among other ideas.

The panel recommended protecting the university’s prestigious academic and research programs.

UCR spokesman John Warren emphasized that no cuts have been made.

“The committee presented considerations for budget reductions across the campus, given the serious nature of the financial challenges,” Warren said in an emailed statement. “No final decisions on budget reductions have been made for any unit on campus, including Athletics.”

More will be known in fall, likely in October, he said.

UCR has been growing in enrollment and prestige, rapidly climbing the ladder of the nation’s top-ranked institutions of higher learning.

At the same time, it is one of the nation’s most ethnically diverse schools and a favorite choice for students trying to become the first in their families to earn four-year degrees.

Dylan Rodriguez, outgoing chair of the Academic Senate, said by phone that axing the athletic program was brought up in summer budget talks.

However, he said the idea hasn’t “gained much momentum” and elimination isn’t “imminent.”

“UCR is under extreme financial duress to protect its teaching and research functions,” Rodriguez said, and because of that “everything else is on the table.”

The new Academic Senate chair, Jason Stajich, professor of microbiology and plant pathology, said the likelihood athletics would be dropped is “probably low, but I can’t say that it is zero.”

“We have to look at all the options to preserve the mission of the university,” he said.

Harrison, the former multi-sport athlete who also has served as chair of the UCR Foundation Board of Trustees, said it’s troubling that elimination of an entire program, and not the dropping of one or two sports, has been discussed.

“That this is even on the table is astounding,” Harrison said.

Riverside resident Stan Morrison, UCR’s athletic director from 1999 to 2011, said he would hate to see the university’s sports disappear.

“I think it would be a beyond-huge mistake to drop athletics,” Morrison said. “Athletics is a part of the fabric of all of the great universities in our country.”

Morrison said that, if UCR abandoned sports, it would be difficult to bring them back.

He noted that UCR football, which was played from 1955 through 1975, never returned after it was dropped.

Tamica Smith Jones, UCR’s director of intercollegiate athletics, said in a statement that she hopes sports will continue long into the future.

“We clearly want Athletics to be here as we believe we bring tremendous value to our university,” she said.

Jones said the department already has made “painful” cuts, laying off several employees when teams’ seasons were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Kim Cherniss, a university hall-of-fame athlete who played as Kim Holder on UCR’s Division II national championship women’s volleyball team in 1982, urged officials to “find a way to preserve something that has provided a bridge to the community for so many years.”

“Athletics is such an important part of a university’s identity, and it is a big part of what the student body expects to experience and be part of the campus life,” said Cherniss, who is now women’s volleyball coach at Cal State San Bernardino.

“Whenever you see someone wearing a Highlanders T-shirt in the community, that is a direct result of the importance of intercollegiate athletics,” she said.

Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox, in an Aug. 28 letter to the UCR community, said state funding for UCR has been cut by about $32 million this year and more reductions are expected in the fiscal year that begins next July.

At the same time, revenue from housing, dining, parking and other services on campus has plummeted and enrollment has fallen, he wrote, even as operating expenses are rising.

Warren said the “core” budget is about $575 million, and comprised of state dollars (44%), student tuition (50%) and non-resident tuition (6%).

The pandemic has affected each of those sources, he said, and as a result, this year’s budget is down $46 million, or about 8%.

Support for athletics runs in the $12-million-to-$14-million range per year, Warren said.

UC Riverside competes in NCAA Division I, the highest level of intercollegiate athletics, and is a member of the Big West Conference. The university moved from Division II to Division I in the 2000-01 school year.

“The only reason we moved to Division I, got a new rec center and upgraded facilities is because the students voted for that,” Harrison said. “They agreed to have their tuitions raised in order for the athletic department and the teams to make significant progress.”

The university competes in 15 sports: men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s and women’s track and field, baseball, softball and women’s volleyball.

UCR had 304 athletes during the 2018-19 school year, the most recent total reported on the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics Data Analysis website.

The next step, Wilcox wrote, is for deans, vice chancellors and other leaders to present their strategies for trimming costs to the Budget Advisory Committee in mid or late September. About that time, the university should have more details about fall enrollment, federal relief money and other factors that affect budgeting, he said.

Warren said that decisions likely will be made in October, with cuts to be spread over two years.

“This is a decision they need to make quickly,” Harrison said. “You have kids already here that have turned down other opportunities to come to UCR and others that are being recruited. They need to know as soon as possible whether they have a future in athletics here or not.”